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  That doesn’t mean he would have married you. It doesn’t mean anything would have been different. She’d been too young, too idealistic and too romantic back then. Maybe the truth was Travis had just been looking for a Robidoux sister to marry so he could further his own goals. Just because he kissed her once on the edge of the tobacco field, whispered words that she’d longed to hear, didn’t mean a thing.

  She managed a small smile. “I’m glad you two are still friends.”

  Elaina’s shoulders relaxed along with the tightness around her smile. She clearly had not wanted to continue to explore any of her feeling for Travis. “I’d thought Daddy lost his mind plucking him from that trailer park and training him up, but he’s proven himself to be loyal. That’s all the family needs.”

  India opened her mouth to ask what Elaina needed, but footsteps sounded in the hall right before a man walked into the room. India’s breath rushed from her lungs.

  Time had only enhanced his good looks. Dark brown skin smoother than the finest mahogany. Midnight black bedroom eyes that used to pierce through her shyness to the bold girl she’d tried to hide from her daddy. He had a swimmer’s body. Tall, sleek, well-defined. He wore a maroon polo shirt and dark brown slacks that complemented his dark skin. His full lips were parted in a big smile. He hadn’t noticed them, as he looked back and smiled at her brother behind him. Yet flashes went through her mind of his lips brushing her neck and his eyes staring at her beneath lowered lashes in the moonlight.

  Byron saw them and his grin brightened the room. “India. You’re home.”

  Travis swung around. His dark gaze collided with hers.

  “India?” His deep voice washed over her. She’d forgotten the sound of her name on his lips: low, smooth, intoxicating. As if he savored the syllables as they rolled off his tongue.

  Her stomach tightened and she chugged the remaining wine in her glass. Heat prickled across her skin like a thousand needles. She should have gone to LA. She should have realized running from a problem didn’t make the problem go away. Her brain screamed run and her feet twitched with the urgency to obey as the one answer she’d come home to find out robbed her of the ability speak. She was still in love with her sister’s husband.

  Forbidden Promises

  by Synithia Williams

  Look for it March 2020 from HQN Books!

  Copyright © 2020 by Synithia R. Williams

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  One

  “You’ve completely lost your mind.” Luke Barrett stared across the room at his grandfather. “You said you wanted me to come over to really talk. This isn’t talking, Pop. This is nuts.”

  Jamison Barrett stood up from behind his desk, and Luke took just a moment to admire the fact that, at eighty, the old man still stood military-straight. Fit and strong, Jamison was a man to be reckoned with—as he always had been. His steel-gray hair was expertly cut, and he wore a tailored navy-blue pin-striped suit with a power red tie. The look he gave his grandson promised a battle.

  “You should know better than to tell an old man he’s crazy,” he said. “We’re sensitive about that sort of thing.”

  Luke shook his head. His grandfather had always been stubborn—Luke was used to that. But a few months ago, the old man had dropped a bomb and, clearly, he hadn’t changed his mind about it.

  “I don’t know what else to call this,” Luke argued, feeling as frustrated as he had when Pop first brought this up. “When the president of a company suddenly makes a U-turn and wants to cut off its most profitable arm, I think that qualifies as nuts.”

  Jamison came around the corner of his desk, probably hoping to put this little meeting on a friendlier footing. “I don’t have any intention of pulling out of the tech world. I only want to dial it back—”

  “Yes,” Luke interrupted. “In favor of wooden rocking horses, bicycles and skateboards.”

  “We’re a toy company first,” Jamison reminded him. “We have been for more than a hundred damn years.”

  “And then we grew into Barrett Toys and Tech,” Luke pointed out.

  “Grew in the wrong direction,” his grandfather snapped.

  “Disagree.” Luke blew out a breath and tried to rein in the exasperation nearly choking him. He had always trusted Pop’s judgment. But in this, he was willing to fight the older man because, damn it, the path to the future wasn’t through the past.

  “I’ve got studies to back me up.”

  “And I’ve got profit and loss statements to prove you’re wrong.”

  “Yeah, we’re making plenty of money, but is that all we want?”

  Luke’s jaw dropped. “Since that is sort of the whole point of being in business, I’m going to say yes.”

  Jamison shook his head in clear disappointment. “You used to have a broader vision.”

  “And you used to listen to me.” Irritated, Luke shoved both hands into his slacks pockets and gave a quick glance around his grandfather’s office.

  It was familiar and warm and pretty much fit the old man to a T. Jamison’s desk was a hand-carved mahogany behemoth that dominated the huge room. If there was ever a tidal wave that swept this far inland, Pop could float on that thing for days.

  On the cream-colored walls were framed posters of their most popular toys over the years, and family photos dotted the shelves that were also lined with leather-bound books that had actually been read. It was a prestigious Victorian office that seemed at war with the present times.

  But then, so was Jamison.

  “I don’t want to argue with you about this again, Pop,” Luke said, trying to keep the impatience he was feeling out of his tone.

  He owed this proud old man everything. Jamison and his wife, Loretta, had raised Luke and his cousin Cole after the boys’ parents were killed in a small plane crash. Luke had been ten and Cole twelve when they went to live with their grandparents as broken, grief-stricken kids. But Jamison and Loretta had picked up the pieces in spite of their own grief at losing both of their sons and daughters-in-law in one horrific accident. They had given their grandsons love and protection and the feeling that their world hadn’t ended.

  Luke and Cole had grown up working at Barrett Toys, knowing that one day they would be in charge. The company was more than a hundred years old and had always stayed current by leaping into the future—taking chances. When Luke was in college and convinced his grandfather that tech toys were going to be the next big thing, Jamison hadn’t hesitated.

  He’d gathered up the finest tech designers he could find, and the Barrett toy company got even bigger, even more successful. Now they were on the cutting edge. Counted as one of the biggest toy and tech companies in the world. For the last few years, Luke had been running the tech division, and Cole worked on the more traditional outlet.

  Okay yes, Cole wasn’t happy that Luke was the heir apparent, especially since he was two years older than Luke, but the cousins had worked that out. Mostly.

  Now, though, none of them knew where they stood. All because Jamison Barrett had gotten a bug up his—

  “I’m not talking about an argument, Luke,” Jamison said, clearly irritated. “I’m talking about what I see every time I walk out of this office. Hell, Luke, if you weren’t glued to your phone like the rest of humanity, you’d see it, too.”

  As irritated as his grandfather, Luke bit back his temper. He’d heard this argument over and
over during the last couple of months. “Not this again.”

  “Yes, this. This is about the kids, Luke. As attached to their phones and screens and tablets and games as you are to your email.” Jamison threw both hands high. “Used to be, children were running amok outside with their friends, getting into trouble, climbing trees, swimming.” He glared at Luke. “Hell, you and Cole were in constant motion when you were kids. Making you stay inside and read was looked at like torture!”

  All true, he thought, but he only said, “Times change.”

  Jamison scowled. “Not always for the better. Kids today, all their friends are online, and they wear headsets so they can talk to each other without actually having to see each other. Instead of getting outside, they build ‘virtual’ tree houses. They have carefully written adventures via game boxes.”

  “Hell, most kids probably don’t even know how to ride a bike anymore.”

  Luke shook his head. “Bikes aren’t going to teach them how to navigate what’s becoming a completely digital world.”

  “Right. A digital world.” Jamison nodded sharply. “Who’s going to fix your cars, or air conditioners, or the damn toilet when it breaks? You going to pee digitally, too? It’s going to get mighty hot in your house if you’re only using virtual air-conditioning.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Luke muttered, amazed that he had allowed himself to get sucked into Jamison’s fixation. He had to wonder where his visionary grandfather had gone. Did this happen to all old people? Did they all start slipping into a hole and then pulling the hole in after them?

  “Pop, you’re making the same kind of complaint every generation makes about the newer one. You’ve never been the kind of man to look backward. You’ve always been more interested in the future than the past. This isn’t like you.”

  “Times change.” Jamison tossed Luke’s words back at him. “And I am talking about the future,” the older man argued. “There are all kinds of studies out now about what staring at screens are doing to kids’ minds. That’s why I wanted you to come in. I want you to see them. Read them. Open your damn mind long enough to admit that maybe I’ve got a point.”

  With that, Jamison turned to his desk and started riffling through the papers and files stacked there. Muttering beneath his breath, he checked everywhere, then checked again.

  “I had it right here,” he muttered. “Had Donna print it all out this morning.” Facing Luke again, he said, “I can’t find it right now and damned if I can figure out why—”

  Luke frowned. “Doesn’t matter.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. Blast it, Luke, I don’t want to be part of ruining a generation of children.”

  “Ruining?” Astonished, Luke stared at him. “We’re giving kids a step up, helping them learn to read—”

  “Their parents could do that by reading to them at night.”

  “Toddlers learn colors and puzzle solving with our games.”

  “They can do that with a box of crayons.”

  “God, you’re a hardhead.”

  “First, I’m losing my mind, and now I’m just old and stubborn, is that it?” Jamison’s eyes flashed. “Well, I can tell you I’m sharper than you are if you can’t see the truth in what I’m telling you.”

  Luke shoved both hands through his hair. Maybe he hadn’t really come to his grandfather’s office. Maybe he was home in bed having a nightmare. Or maybe he’d taken a sharp left turn on the way here and had somehow ended up in hell.

  His grandfather had always been on the current edge of everything. This about-face had really thrown Luke. He looked at Jamison’s attitude now as not trusting Luke to take the helm of the company. As if he’d been indulging Luke and, now, was pulling the rug out from under him.

  He took a deep breath, reminded himself that he loved the old man currently driving him bat-crap crazy and said, “You know what? We’re just not going to agree on this, Pop. We need to stop hammering at each other over it. It’s better if both of us just keep doing what we’re doing.”

  Or at least what they had been doing the last couple of months. When Jamison first told Luke about his idea to scale back the tech division, Luke had argued until his head throbbed. He’d presented his case against the idea, which Pop had quickly dismissed. It hadn’t been the first time they’d locked horns and fought it out, but somehow that argument had felt more...final than any of the others. When it was over, Luke had taken a stand and left the company to go out on his own. If nothing else, he was going to prove to his grandfather that he had faith in his own plans. Prove that tech toys really were the wave of the future.

  “That’s it? We just part ways? That’s your final word on this?”

  He met his grandfather’s dark green eyes. It felt like the chasm between them was getting wider by the second. For now, Luke was going to concentrate on building his own tech toy company, Go Zone. “It is, Pop. The past can’t build the future.”

  “You can’t have a future without a past,” Jamison pointed out.

  “And the carousel keeps turning,” Luke muttered. “Every time we talk about this, we say the same things, and neither one of us is convinced. We’re on opposite sides of this, Pop. And there is no bridge. For me, it’s better if I stay out on my own.”

  “Your grandmother cried last night. Over all of this.”

  Instantly, a sharp pang of guilt stabbed Luke but, then, he thought about it. Loretta Barrett was as tough as they came. His grandfather was sneaky enough to try to use his wife to win the argument. “No, she didn’t.”

  Jamison scowled. “No, she didn’t,” he admitted. “She yelled some. But she could have cried. Probably will.”

  Luke blew out a breath and shook his head. “You’re impossible.”

  “I’m doing what I have to do. You belong here, Luke, not running your own place.”

  And honestly, Luke had thought that Barrett Toys was his place. But things had changed with Pop’s change of heart. With what felt to Luke as his lack of faith. His grandfather had always pushed him, believed in him. Trusted him. This felt like a betrayal, plain and simple. Luke’s new company was small, but he had some great designers, just out of college, filled with ideas that would shake up the toy tech business. Luke was hoping to get manufacturing up and pumping out his new line by the end of the year.

  This had all started because he’d been frustrated with his grandfather—but now, Luke was committed to making this work. Jamison might be willing to turn his back on progress, but Luke was greeting it with open arms.

  “This is the Barrett toy company,” Jamison reminded him. “A Barrett has been in charge since the beginning. Family, Luke. That’s what’s important.”

  That’s what made all of this so much harder.

  “We’re still family, Pop,” he reminded the older man—and himself at the same time. “And remember, you’ve got Cole here to run the business if you ever decide to retire.”

  “Cole’s not you,” Jamison said flatly. “I love the boy, but he hasn’t got the head for the business that you do.”

  “He’ll come around,” Luke said, though he didn’t really believe it. Hell, it’s why Luke had been Jamison’s choice to run the company in the first place. Cole just wasn’t interested in the day-to-day of running a business. He liked being in charge. Liked the money. But he was a delegator, not a worker.

  “You always were a stubborn one,” Jamison muttered.

  “Wonder where I got that,” Luke said wryly.

  “Touché.” Nodding, his grandfather said, “Fine. You do what you have to do, so will I.”

  Luke hated having this simmering tension between him and his grandfather. Jamison Barrett was the rock in Luke’s life. The old man had taught him how to fish, how to throw a fastball and how to tie a bow tie. He’d taught Luke everything about running a business and how to treat employees. He’d been there. Al
ways. And now, Luke felt like he was abandoning him. But damned if he could think of a way to end it so that both of them came out winning.

  “Give my love to Gran.”

  He left before his grandfather could say anything else, closing the office door behind him. The company headquarters was in Foothill Ranch, California, and most of the windows looked out over palm trees, more buildings and parking lots. Still, there was a greenbelt nearby and enough sunlight pouring through the lightly tinted windows to make the whole place bright.

  Jamison’s secretary, Donna, looked up from her computer screen. She was comfortably in her fifties and had been with Jamison for thirty years. “See you, Luke.”

  “Yeah,” he answered, giving his grandfather’s door one last look. He didn’t like leaving the old man like this, but what choice did he have?

  Still frowning to himself, he asked, “Is Cole here?”

  “Yep.” Donna nodded toward a bank of offices across the room.

  “Thanks.” Luke headed over to see his cousin. He gave a brisk knock, then opened the door and stuck his head in. “How’s it going?”

  “Hey.” Cole looked up and smiled. Even in a suit, he looked like a typical California surfer. Tanned, fit, with sun-streaked blond hair and blue eyes, Cole Barrett was the charmer in the company. He did lunches with prospective clients and took meetings with manufacturers because he could usually smooth-talk people into just about anything. “You here to see Pop?”

  “Just left him.” Luke braced one shoulder on the doorjamb and idly noted how different Cole’s office was from their grandfather’s. Smaller, of course, but that was to be expected. It was more than that, though. Cole’s desk was steel and glass, his desk chair black leather minimalist. Shelves were lined with some of the toys their company had produced over the years, but the walls were dotted with professionally done photos of his wife, Susan, and their toddler son, Oliver—skiing in Switzerland, visiting the Pyramids and aboard the family yacht. Cole had always been more interested in playing than in the work required to make the money to do the playing.